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Because you are So Uppity!

Not because he ran against Hillary (or even how he ran against Hillary although that is an excellent argument for another post) but because he is a failure as a leader.

Here’s a guy who started out with a massive social media following of the Professional Left and those who followed them. It wasn’t as large as Takei, but still large and similar followers.

Without the pre-existing 25-year feud the media’s been having with Hillary, Bernie was free to campaign unfettered and un-vetted. The media only stepped in to accuse Hillary people of not knowing the meaning of Socialism and of red-baiting (because obviously, if you’re for universal health care and roads, you also want an authoritarian leader and to wait in line for toilet paper).

Bernie’s rallies were just like Trump’s—where he’d continuously remind you that your life is miserable and the Democratic party and your country sucked and how there was something inherently wrong with you if you were happy or satisfied. Status quo people are happy and satisfied. If you had ever worked on a political project in your life, you were the establishment. Those people who for decades had phone-banked and stuffed envelopes, who now provided the very forums where he could speak, were establishment scum. The people of Planned Parenthood and Human Rights Campaign, who had worked their asses off for decades to get a seat at the table were now, because they had a seat at the table, establishment. It was important for Bernie to get and keep people angry and he is very good at that.

He taught them nothing. To this day, they remain vastly ignorant about our political process. They didn’t know that parties select their nominees through primaries that are largely limited to members of the party. Even though a volunteer group set up a website that explained how to vote for Bernie. It contained detailed instructions on where and how to register and provided deadlines, by state. Bernie could have taken some time out of being jealous over Clinton’s speeches to explain how that worked. Instead of flocking to rallies like people used to go to Grateful Dead concerts, they could have missed just one to go register to vote. Not one to let an opportunity go unexploited, Bernie instead claimed that the primaries were rigged. For that, may he Bern In Hell.

Bernie was the guy who ran for class president by promising free ice cream for lunch and Friday afternoons off. His followers never asked him how. The media never asked him how. It wasn’t until the NY primary rolled around and the NY Daily News got around to asking him how and he stammered and then admitted he hadn’t thought that far. But it was too late. His followers were already true believers who thought reciting a bunch of acronyms and bumper stickers was indeed issues-based policy discussion. Meanwhile, even though Hillary had a website packed with sound, achievable policies on all of the issues, they said she had no positions on the issues and her supporters were just voting their vaginas. (No one does sexism and misogyny quite like the Left of the Left.) To this day, a good 80% of them don’t know what TPP stands for or what about it they don’t like. (Fun fact: they adore PM Justin Trudeau of Canada and laud him as a True Progressive™ yet Trudeau is for both TPP and the Keystone XL Pipeline!)

He failed to teach them about coalition building and how to organize. They were merely insufferable purity trolls running on Red Bull. Although, because they are adept at social media, had a few assists from the right wing, and weren’t bound by tired old rules of common decency, they were able to get pretty far.

He fanned the flames of poor sportsmanship and team playing. A party he spent a lifetime criticizing graciously allowed him to run as one of us. He even admitted he was using us for the money, the infrastructure, and the media exposure. For our largess, he stole our data and turned around and sued us for noticing. Things only deteriorated from there. Not once did Hillary go after him with a negative smear or ad.

Bernie promised them a revolution. Evolution takes time. Revolution is instant gratification. He reinforced their belief that the process was stupid, wrong, or rigged and must change to their demands without anyone needing to do any of the work to effect that change. And only a set of rules that would benefit Bernie and no one else would be gratifying. That’s why Bernie is for open primaries, against Super delegates but sadly silent on the most undemocratic process of all: caucuses.

In the end, all Bernie taught them was to keep their anger hot. For that, we can always count on them to show up for a rally or a protest, although the risk of a misspelled sign or a violent riot is high.

He taught them nothing about the big picture or the greater good or seven generations ahead or about coalitions and dancing with them who brung you.

For years, we have been threatened with SCOTUS and The End Civilization As We Know It over far more benign opponents. Look where we are now. The presidency will be occupied by a buffoon who ran literally using Hitler as a model and who hires the least qualified, most rapacious people. Both houses of Congress remain controlled by the Stupid Party. SCOTUS is hosed for 30 years. We are one state legislature away from a Constitutional amendment by people who believe in Alex Jones. This is that nightmare they have always threatened us with. The one upside is: we are now impervious to their threats. None are as dangerous as those who have nothing to lose. Or as free. For example, I am free to vote against every single candidate Bernie or his fans endorse for the rest of my life. And I will.

Many factors went into giving us Herr Buffoon and IMHO, the media was the worst (I’ll address them at another time). But here was a guy who did no small amount of unnecessary damage in service to his ego. I cannot do enough to repay him.

Hillary for America general counsel Marc Elias on listening and responding to calls for an audit and recount:

“Over the last few days, officials in the Clinton campaign have received hundreds of messages, emails, and calls urging us to do something, anything, to investigate claims that the election results were hacked and altered in a way to disadvantage Secretary Clinton. The concerns have arisen, in particular, with respect to Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — three states that together proved decisive in this presidential election and where the combined margin of victory for Donald Trump was merely 107,000 votes.

It should go without saying that we take these concerns extremely seriously. We certainly understand the heartbreak felt by so many who worked so hard to elect Hillary Clinton, and it is a fundamental principle of our democracy to ensure that every vote is properly counted.

Moreover, this election cycle was unique in the degree of foreign interference witnessed throughout the campaign: the U.S. government concluded that Russian state actors were behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the personal email accounts of Hillary for America campaign officials, and just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the Russian government was behind much of the “fake news” propaganda that circulated online in the closing weeks of the election.

For all these reasons, we have quietly taken a number of steps in the last two weeks to rule in or out any possibility of outside interference in the vote tally in these critical battleground states.
First, since the day after the election we have had lawyers and data scientists and analysts combing over the results to spot anomalies that would suggest a hacked result. These have included analysts both from within the campaign and outside, with backgrounds in politics, technology and academia.

Second, we have had numerous meetings and calls with various outside experts to hear their concerns and to discuss and review their data and findings. As a part of this, we have also shared out data and findings with them. Most of those discussions have remained private, while at least one has unfortunately been the subject of leaks.

Third, we have attempted to systematically catalogue and investigate every theory that has been presented to us within our ability to do so.

Fourth, we have examined the laws and practices as they pertain to recounts, contests and audits.

Fifth, and most importantly, we have monitored and staffed the post-election canvasses — where voting machine tapes are compared to poll-books, provisional ballots are resolved, and all of the math is double checked from election night. During that process, we have seen Secretary Clinton’s vote total grow, so that, today, her national popular vote lead now exceeds more than 2 million votes.

In the coming days, we will continue to perform our due diligence and actively follow all further activities that are to occur prior to the certification of any election results. For instance, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania conduct post-election audits using a sampling of precincts. Michigan and many other states still do not. This is unfortunate; it is our strong belief that, in addition to an election canvass, every state should do this basic audit to ensure accuracy and public confidence in the election.

Beyond the post-election audit, Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced Friday that she will exercise her right as a candidate to pursue a recount in the state of Wisconsin. She has indicated plans to also seek recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides. If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well. We do so fully aware that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states — Michigan — well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount. But regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself.

The campaign is grateful to all those who have expended time and effort to investigate various claims of abnormalities and irregularities. While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported.”